Zine makers face two types of questions when they disclose their hobby. The uninitiated wonder if a zine is similar to a magazine or if it’s something different entirely. And people who are familiar with zines from their 1990s heyday wonder that anyone is still making them.

Answers to the second sort of question might be found on Sunday at the Brooklyn Zine Fest at Public Assembly in Williamsburg.

The “What is a zine?” questions can be harder to answer. Zines (rhymes with beans, not mines) are small, homemade publications that are produced by artists, memoirists, political activists and pretty much anyone with a DIY streak. They are published regularly, irregularly or just once, and distributed person to person, by mail-order catalog, and at fairs and specialty stores.

It’s difficult to come up with a more specific definition because no one zine is quite like another. Some are finely fashioned art objects that are laid out like tiny flip books or giant maps. Others are crudely photocopied pages stapled together. Quality and content vary wildly.

But zine making is alive and well, as evidenced by the zine fairs that have popped up across the country in the last few years. At the Chicago Zine Fest in February, three floors of the Ludington Building at Columbia College were packed with rows of exhibitors’ tables. The event resembled something between a craft fair and a trade show, with zines stacked in messy piles and young artists sitting patiently, waiting for patrons to stop by and ask about their newest product, and maybe even shell out a few dollars for a copy. (Prices ranged from free to $5 or $6 for the more elaborate ones.)

In his book “Notes From Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture,” Stephen Duncombe, an associate professor at New York University, writes that while science fiction fanzines cropped up as far back as the 1930s, the scene didn’t achieve its greatest recognition until the 1980s and early 1990s, when zines were more widely adopted as an expression of countercultural dissatisfaction with what was perceived as homogeneous popular media. And while there was a moment of retrenchment for zines after the introduction of personal Web pages in the late 1990s, there has been a continuing interest among artists curious about the possibilities and limitations.

“There has always been skepticism in the fine art world about zines,” said Eleanor Whitney, a teacher and artist who has gained notice for her zine, Indulgence, in which she has chronicled her life since she began publishing it in 1998. “Now there’s a cool factor, a lot of which comes from museums and galleries that feature them.”

In New York, zines are available for sale in shops like Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and are collected at zine libraries in institutions like Brooklyn and Barnard Colleges, but there aren’t many communal spaces for fans to congregate.

“There are these different pockets in the city that are disconnected,” said Kseniya Yarosh, who organizes the Brooklyn Zine Fest with her fiancé, Matt Carman. Zine fairs, Ms. Yarosh said, “are maybe the thing that brings these different groups together for one day each year.” Fairs are also where zines will find their biggest audience; most zines are not published online.

After a zine fair in 2009 failed to become an annual New York tradition, Mr. Carman and Ms. Yarosh took it upon themselves to organize another at the Public Assembly in Brooklyn last spring. The second iteration of their fair, on Sunday, is expected to draw zine creators from as far as Southern California. (Similar events in the city are starting up now, like the feminist zine fair, which began last year.)

This year’s zine-making participants — about 85 — reflect the variety in contemporary zine culture. There are personal titles, including a graphic memoir produced by a deaf woman recounting her experiences. (It’s called Deafula, an irreverent play on Dracula.) There are titles that examine broad topics, like the definition of masculinity (Slacks), or the hyperspecific, like Mr. Carman and Ms. Yarosh’s zines, including a collection of essays written by people who have appeared on or worked for game shows (Come On Down).

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Then there are the more ephemeral works, some of which look more like experimental art than magazines or journals. Ms. Yarosh produces one called Fig. 1, an accordionlike zine that includes strange images of human body parts found in old medical textbooks and other publications.

Zine creators, it’s clear, have motives as various as the form itself. A frequently cited one, however, is that zine making allows artists a great deal of leeway, with low stakes. “When making a zine, I felt encouraged to try new things,” said Ms. Whitney, who has used zines to experiment with bookmaking techniques, going so far as to integrate recycled wallpaper samples and hand-stitched bindings into her earlier works.

Other creators, Mr. Carman noted, like the relative anonymity afforded zine makers. He cited a zine created in New Mexico by a low-level casino worker, who writes about the culture and business of gambling with a candor that would likely get him fired were it expressed on the Internet, where his boss could easily discover it. He can be selective about his audience while still enjoying the catharsis of writing.

Perhaps the most important reason for zine makers to continue their hobby — even after blogging, Facebook and Twitter became the dominant modes of public personal expression — is that zines are rich with personality. An author might be more likely to reveal herself in the creation of a zine than through the selection of preset templates on a WordPress blog.

“When I look at a zine, I remember the experience of where I got it and the experience of getting it,” Mr. Carman said. “I don’t remember much of what I read online.”

AN ECLECTIC SELECTION INDEED

WHEN AND WHERE Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Public Assembly, 70 North Sixth Street, between Wythe and Kent Avenues, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A selection of zines and zine makers at this year’s Brooklyn Zine Fest:

EAST VILLAGE INKY Personal New York stories from the renowned zine artist Ayun Halliday.

A version of this article appears in print on April 19, 2013, on Page C29 of the New York edition with the headline: Yes, Zines Still Exist, And They’re Not Antiques. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe